Industrialization and slavery in The Sugar Masters

            Our conversation this week touched upon a lot of the ideas that have been circulating throughout this semester. One of our major critiques of this book was that it seemed to cover theoretical and ideological ground with which we were already familiar. The notion that slavery and capitalism were not polar opposites is something that we have talked a lot about in our discussions this semester, and there were questions raised as to whether Follett was bringing new insight into this concept, or simply applying it to a different location and context.

        In addressing this question, it was important to keep in mind that our understanding of the interrelation of these two economic systems is significantly more nuanced, courtesy of HIST1970f, than most people who think about American history. For some readers, then, the clear and careful laying out of the argument of new methods of industrialization alongside long-held dynamics of slavery would have come as more of a surprise than it may have for us.

            For us, too, I think this book served an important purpose. For one thing, it is not simply a repetition of concepts we have already come across. The Louisiana sugar plantations were significantly different from both their southern U.S. and their Caribbean contemporaries. These differences suggest a particular notion of the sugar growing class as a category designed with absolute parameters of race. If free workers could not join the ranks of sugar plantation slaves, even when their manpower was greatly needed, this raises the question of whether Louisiana slaves actually constituted a class.

            Our attention to the distinction between slave labor and wage labor was complex and important. We discussed the striking similarities between the two systems, as well as examining the potential outcomes of highlighting those similarities. I think we came to the crux of the issue in noting that slavery is qualitatively different from wage labor, and that describing the two as interchangeable is a hugely problematic and inaccurate task. At the same time, though, taking note of the similarities without demanding that we equate wage labor with slavery gives us a lens with which we can integrate the industrializing and modernizing tendencies of Louisiana sugar plantations alongside their rigid and racially non-negotiable understanding of slavery.

            This discussion’s relation with agency is where it really gets hairy. Follett takes some major risks in describing slaves as complicit in their own enslavement, while at the same time, valorizing slaves’ agency over their acquiescence risks implying that slavery was not actually the cruel and inhuman system that it was. Agency is even more complex when it includes the agency of planter classes. Follett periodically tosses in a sentence that the slaveholders believed their own façade and rhetoric about paternalism. This unqualified psychological assessment throws the argument of slave compliance into perhaps unintentional contrast, and seems to further the implicit blaming of slaves for their own enslavement. 

The Problem of Class and the Problem of Antislavery

The essays in this book offer a series of opinions and explanations for the simultaneous rise of antislavery and the development of capitalism. Beginning with David Brion Davis’s apparently expansive volume, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, John Ashworth and Thomas Haskell have written articles that critique Davis and offer new interpretations of this phenomenon, using evidence from both Britain and the United States. Over the course of the historians’ progression of articles in this book, arguments are refined and clarified. As Bender suggests in his introduction, this process suggests more common ground among its authors than their initial work might have suggested. I am unsure whether this phenomenon represents a process toward consensus, or rather a process of moving from rather grand theses toward more conservative—and less controvertible—arguments. Each author (particularly Davis and Haskell, who have the most dialogue with one another) would have us believe that he is merely refining and clarifying his point, while his colleague has entirely backed down.

 

There is certainly plenty of room for discussion about the relative merits of each author and each article published here. Bender, Ashworth, Davis, and Haskell have started the conversation for us, and done so with clear and well-researched arguments. This sets the stage for a conversation in class that brings in, as Lester suggested, our earlier readings and conversations.

 

Beyond simply using these articles as tools for our own understanding of class and antislavery, this book is useful in its explicit debate about the reality and nuance of class as a historical lens of analysis. Readings for this class until this book have examined class in varying degrees, but The Antislavery Debate provides an insight into the way class is weighed, considered, and debated as a tool of analysis. These authors also illustrate for us some of the problems of class, notably its many potential definitions. Haskell, who seemed at first to use the term “market” off-handedly and without definition, tries to defend this use in his third article, “Convention and Hegemonic Interest in the Debate over Antislavery.” By stating that “the market [has] multiple and contradictory effects that deny any sort of reconciliation,” (236), Haskell risks rendering the concept of the market too large to be meaningful. On the other hand, Ashworth’s focus on wage labor suggests an inexplicably narrow aspect of class and capitalism.

 

This book offers an important chance to observe the way historians choose to employ class, cognitive changes, and other factors in their analysis. In addition to its insight on the specific questions of class and its merit, I hope that this book will be a springboard for us in discussing the process of historical research, which could be a helpful context as we continue to develop our own research projects. Like these authors, we are responsible for choosing theoretical frameworks and evidence to employ, along with choosing more theoretical or data-based approaches. There is a transparency about this process for historians in The Antislavery Debate that I think can be a valuable tool in our own research and conversations. 

Southern Cross, Afterwards

Our engaging and energetic conversation this week posed many questions, and may have even answered a few of them! By breaking up into small groups at the beginning of class, we identified some of the Big Questions we wanted to discuss, and shaped the opening statements collectively. The definition of evangelicalism started off our conversation. Although a seemingly specific question, we soon found that the difference between the theological and missionary definitions of evangelical Christianity ran parallel to the distinction between dogmatic and cultural histories of the religion. We addressed Heyrman's implicit definition of evangelicalism, and differed as to whether her use of anthropology as a lens of analysis was or was not appropriate for this topic.

We struggled to understand the actors and architects of the changes Heyrman describes. There were a number of nuances and incarnations to this conversation. Heyrman writes with a tone of "before" and "after", and some of us felt that the moment of change itself was unfortunately lacking from her descriptions. We also discussed the question of clergy and their potential overlap with gentry and the ruling elite. How much, and at what times, could clergy be equated with the dominant class? The crux of this question, which permeated most of class, was that of causation between changes in the evangelical churches and the Southern social order. Was it one of mutual influence? Did it change over time? Was the church selling out to demands of the social order? Was the social order changed by the church?

We identified some important gaps in Heyrman's text where more careful and explicit explanation and framing might have helped us evaluate these questions. By and large, though, I think they are questions that are inherently raised by a book such as this, which foregrounds race, gender and age, and uses class as a consistent undercurrent implicitly running through the whole piece. Because this book does not foreground class, it is more of a challenge for us to find it and examine it. Some of our questions seem to suggest that Heyrman's technique was not always successful. In other ways, though, she seems to view class as an important and deeply engrained part of the society of the Early American South, one that perhaps cannot be parsed from the big picture.

At the end of class, we had a brief chance to compare the implications of Heyrman and other writers we have read for this class. I was particularly interested in the connection with Bouton, and whether their books, although very different in material focus, are in fact of a piece. Both begin with the broad-reaching and radical thinking of the pre-revolution years, adn trace these ideals' gradual (and often insidious) erosion toward the mean. Because our readings are often quite disparate from each other, I think it was important to look at how they might connect with one another, and I hope we continue to make a point to keep those conversations active.

We are also experimenting with new ways to organize class, and this week felt very rewarding in that respect. In the future, I would propose that we meet in small groups initially, each group give a 2 or 3 minute opening statement, and then make a clear agenda resulting from those points. Our small groups at the beginning of class yesterday clearly prepared us for our active discussion, but I felt that the order of our points was not entirely logical. For example, it might have made sense to save the conversation about what was not in Heyrman until after we had had a chance to more carefully discuss what she did do, and why. Perhaps if opening statements become more of a group effort, the task of organizing our initial points under two or three main topic headings for the agenda could be the task of the opening people?

Happy St Patrick's Day.